


sophisticated/manipulated

by tascheter



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Episode: s01e03 Past Prologue, F/F, set phasers to: GIRLS
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-17 03:26:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13650459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tascheter/pseuds/tascheter
Summary: and never did i think that icould be caught in the way you caught me—Stardate: 46379.1—Dr. Julian Subatoi Bashir arrives as part of the Federation contingent to the Bajoran high-orbit station of Deep Space 9. Not fifty-six hours later, a chance lunch meeting changes her life forever.





	sophisticated/manipulated

Not an altogether terrible first two days on the station, she thinks, all things considered. Engineering still hasn't gotten back to her about repairs to the sonic shower in her quarters— _your satisfaction is important to us_ ; _all maintenance requests will be handled in the order received_ —but her reception on the station has still, perhaps, gone far more smoothly than was to be expected. Only a bare day back into practice, and she's already met most of her colleagues: Jabara and Ilis, in particular, have been absolutely indispensable, as much for their meticulous inventory of the infirmary's medical supplies as for their warm and collegial hospitality. Thanks to their advice, she's already gotten a good idea of the offerings on the Promenade, and, most importantly, dived directly back into her work.

With that work, of course, comes the brief luxury of meal breaks taken alone. It's a welcome oasis of peace in an otherwise hectic and over-scheduled day: in residency, she'd come to appreciate those half-hours of enforced non-work far more than she had initially anticipated, and now that she has the unparalleled luxury of nearly an entire hour she's almost unsure of how to fill it. Since Jabara has so kindly offered to keep the afternoon vigil over her incubating samples, she's decided that this will be her chance to finally start catching up on her journals. With a full forty-five minutes ahead of her, she's even  been able to queue up the latest downloads of _Lancet_ and _Proceedings of the Vulcan Academy_ for a little light lunchtime reading—she's been waiting for Secon's article on the comparative etiology of human and Vulcan astronauseas for weeks, ever since she read the abstracts, and by _God_ she is going to _savor_ it.

In the meantime, over an incredibly healthful replicated salad of rocket and feta, her padd chirps reproachfully and she realizes with a start that she's spent the past few minutes rereading the same three sentences of Nurse Kelden's overnight report. She shakes her head, reaches over for a sip of whatever the Replimat's " _tarkali'cit_ " setting produced—vaguely spicy and citrusy, a little astringent for her taste, _probably_ not poisonous for the majority of humanoid species—and thumbs over to see what had caused the alert.

_You now have [439] NEW messages._

She gulps. That—that can't possibly be accurate.

She taps on the alert, opening her inbox.

_TO: STATION OFFICERS AND STAFF, SECURITY. Command Policy Updates—_

_TO: STATION MEDICAL. Re: Yearly Ankaran Flu Vaccination Strategies—_

—then this next one is something absolutely incomprehensible, in—Bolian? no, wait, Tzenkethi—something not automatically covered by this padd's translation presets, anyway—

_TO: STATION MEDICAL. Re: Fwd: RE: [UPDATED] Yearly Ankaran Flu Vaccination—_

_TO: STATION OFFICERS AND STAFF, SECURITY. Re: Fwd: FWD: RE: RE: PMA Petition for Increased Promenade Security Measures—_

_TO: STATION OFFICERS AND STAFF, STATION ENGINEERING, OPS, STATION MEDICAL, PROMENADE, [67 more]. DON'T WALK, RUN: COME ON DOWN TO QUARK'S NEW AND *IMPROVED* WHEEL OF SLOGANS—_

—and the list goes on. And on. For— _apparently_ —more than four _hundred_ more messages.

She resists the frustration she can feel rising in her chest. Frankly, it is a little ridiculous: she's been on the station for less than a week, and it's only now that she's getting notified of such a massive quantity of mail? What if there had been an emergency? She resists the urge to roll her eyes, and considers taking a moment to reconfigure this padd's notification settings. Honestly, she hadn't even thought about changing them—hadn't thought it'd be necessary—since she's only had the device from Requisitions for less than twenty-six hours...

Right. Well.

She takes another swallow of not-tea, then sets down her mug.

Anything of truly medical urgency, she reasons, would have been sent through a direct comm. (Probably. _Probably_.) She scrolls through the next couple of pages, trying to keep an eye out for anything that looks immediately important—the station's in dire straits, she'd known that even before she arrived, but she's not afraid to admit that she's not used to this level of anarchy. She dearly hopes she hasn't missed anything urgent. Titles flit by with all the permanence of the electron charges they're written in—something something _Bajoran medical licensing_ , something something _revised fraternization guidelines_ , plus what she can already tell to be endless bickering over station immunological strategy—but nothing that she's already heard of, or from anyone she already knows. Some of them are completely nonsensical, like almost anything from whoever's running the "QUARK'S!" account, and at least forty percent of them are forwards and re-forwards of the same dozen or so default lists.

She bites her lip. A few of them do look half-interesting, if in a lukewarm sort of way—this is only a station account, no one _really_ interesting knows to reach her here yet. Most of this _has_ to be junk. But even with Starfleet's internal processing times, there's no way this could all be forwarded academy mail...

To be honest, it's the little firework effects in that one subject line that get her. And, for God's sake, she's only been on the station for less than two days—and her account can't have been up for much longer than that—where are they all _coming_ from?

She glances over at the time, and thinks of her incubating samples.

The bustle of the replimat around her is a pleasant background hum. She tries to sternly remind herself: it is her lunch break, and sticking to her scheduled periods of non-work time only improves her at-work performance. But then again, she has, apparently, more than four hundred unread mails.

Perhaps best to push through these in the order received.

Another weary sip from her mug, and she opens the first of the messages.

 _TO: station.command-staff.lists_  
_FROM: odo  
SUBJ: Command Policy Updates_

_Deep Space Nine Chief of Security to Station Command Staff: greetings._

_Following the arrival of Federation Commander Benjamin Sisko on Stardate 46388.2, all station officers and staff are advised of the following updates to station policy, attached here for your reference. A meeting to discuss these updates will be convened immediately following Commander Sisko's official installation—_

She stifles a groan, and tries not to roll her eyes. Fifty-two entire light years from Earth, and she still can't outrun staff meetings. The gravity of administration, it seems, is only another universal constant.

_—in light of Bajoran security's recent threat assessment levels, Staff are also advised that planetside and interplanetary travel routed through the station will now be subject to enhanced security measures, as outlined in the Updated Transit Security Policy Handbook, §5.11.17—_

Ugh. _Ugh._

She doesn't want to think about meetings and policy updates, so she instead—admittedly self-indulgently—lets her mind wander a little afield. As she looks more closely at the message, it prompts a number of questions. First, who the hell is "odo?" It doesn't look like a name, and she's vaguely sure the word means something as a word, rather a simple onomastic, in _some_ language—thanks, brain, incredibly unhelpful—but she can't think of exactly what. And—she doesn't want to say this entire meeting sounds beneath her, but she sure feels it. She has a clinic to get running, she has _patients_. Surely conference calls exist even _this_ far from civilization. She knows these questions have probably been answered somewhere already, and she's _sure_ she must have been  given _some_ kind of introductory material on the trip from Trill.

But. Well. A flush of heat rises over her cheeks, and she tries to drown it out in another swallow of not-tea. (Eventually, she needles herself, she's going to have to figure out what " _tarkali'cit_ " actually translates to. It might not be terrible, if she played around with it a little.) In her defense, on the trip from Trill, she'd had a lot on her mind: that science officer they'd picked up had just been so beautiful, and _so_ charming, and when she'd handed her the padd loaded with orientation literature, their hands had almost touched—

"Oh! Excuse me." A voice, soft and sudden, makes itself known only gently, at the edges of her perception. "You must be—Doctor Bashir, isn't it?"

Julian looks up from her padd without thinking, almost dreamily.

"Ah, of course it is." The woman favors her with a charming grin, almost as if speaking to herself. "I do hope I'm not disturbing you. May I introduce myself?"

**Author's Note:**

> i got this idea about a month or two after finishing ds9, and it just hasn't let me go! this is just something i started working on for fun, so i hope it is as enjoyable to read as it was to write.
> 
> i'm planning for this eventually to cover the rest of "past prologue," but i can't promise any reliable update schedule. but let me know if you enjoyed? i'm still getting my bearings with this whole writing thing, but i've got some more mainstream garashir drafts kicking around, and i'd love to hear what you think!


End file.
